


One Leap

by moonstalker24



Series: Jaguar Kings [1]
Category: Blade (Movie Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, M/M, Werejaguar Hannibal King
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 03:21:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4730975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonstalker24/pseuds/moonstalker24
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>After that he tells the Sommerfields what he is. What exactly was taken away from him when Danica turned him. Nothing really changes except that when he can’t sleep at night he’ll join Anna in the lab and curl up on her feet in jaguar form. When Zoe has a nightmare he’ll curl up in bed with her, a giant, furry sentinel guarding her from the evils of the world.</i><br/> </p><p> </p><p>  <i>Then everything changes again when they move into the Honeycomb Hideout.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	One Leap

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Casey_Wolfe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Casey_Wolfe/gifts).



> For Casey, whom I love and adore. Drake/Hannibal King is one of the many otps we share, and she adores a good Shapeshifter!AU, so this is what I came up with. She was unhelpful, but inspiring anyway and I ended up challenging myself to write characters I never had before and it kept growing until it became this monstrosity.  
> Any errors or OOC are my fault.
> 
> Also, according to national geographic Jaguar comes from the native american "yaguar" which means "he who kills with one leap". Which is where the title comes from.

**One Leap**

 

The day that Danica Talos bites Hannibal is the worst day of his life.

It’s not because he becomes a vampire. It’s not because he becomes Danica’s personal chew toy. It’s not even because he can’t see the sun anymore without frying to a crisp. It’s because he’s lost part of himself. A huge, fundamental part that makes him feel like he’s lost all his limbs or his soul. He feels hollow and empty.

He can no longer feel the animal inside him. His senses have all changed in ways he doesn’t like. All still enhanced, but subtle differences in how they’re different, are disorienting. He no longer feels the brush of silken fur inside. Can no longer feel the beast inside that has been there all his life.

This feeling persists. His despair at what he’s lost is the only reason Danica manages to keep him under her thumb. He becomes a nuisance and a great annoyance, not because he wants her to put him out, but because he wants her to kill him. He doesn’t want to live if he can’t be whole. If he can’t shift into the great gold and black jaguar he spent more than half his childhood as.

When he comes across the Hunters he only puts up a token fight. Maybe they’ll kill him? Maybe his misery is finally over and he won’t feel _hollow_ anymore.

Instead they capture him, chain him down in a barren room with a single drain in the floor, and pump him full of some drug that burns its way through his veins. It hurts more than anything he’s ever felt before. He screams and screams and screams, and no one comes to help him. The Hunters leave him in that room for days while he screams and expels bodily fluids and slime.

In the end, on the final day, when the Hunters come back and haul him to his feet, before the darkness finally takes him, he can feel it. That part of himself he’d thought was gone is curled up within him once more. He feels heavier, elated, and a jumble of other things.

When he’s laid down on a gurney he grabs onto the Hunter leaning over him and says “Thank you” in a hoarse, overused voice and lets the blackness take him.

He won’t remember it, but this is his first real meeting with Abigail Whistler.

*

It takes a while to recover. To become used to being himself again. Five years is a long time to be separated from your shift. He meditates a lot, spends hours running and jumping. Vanishes into the forests for days on end.

He stays with the Nightstalkers. Not because he needs them in order to kill Danica. No, he’s strong enough now he could kill Danica, Asher and that idiot Jarko before they knew what had hit them. He stays with the Nightstalkers because he’s grateful. He owes them a debt.

The humans don’t know what he is. He isn’t going to enlighten them. Instead he takes on the mantle of sarcastic, somewhat annoying Hunter. His skills in fighting make enduring his personality worth it, so they let him stay.

Of all of the others, he likes Sommerfield the best. She reminds him of his mother before drought and hunters killed her. Anna takes his need to be around her, to be loved, and goes with it. She treats him like he’s her son, let’s him be an older brother to Zoe. Zoe, who is a bright shining beacon of all that is good in the world.

It doesn’t take long for the Sommerfield’s to learn what he is. He’s just grateful that the rest are away from their base of operations when it happens.

They move bases every six months or so just because it’s safer. Vampires seem to have a knack for finding them if they stay in one place for too long. This time they’ve only been where they are for a couple of months, and if Hannibal wasn’t so worried, he’d be demanding to know how they found them.

As it is, he’s almost out of ammunition; and the vamps are between him and the armoury. He knows that Sommerfield can hold her own. That cane is sturdy, made of titanium, and she knows how to use it. Zoe on the other hand is seven and he can hear her screaming.

He pushes his shifter body to go faster, takes down the vamp between him and the door with a leap into the air that has his solid mass 190 pounds striking the vamp in the middle of the back. A single gunshot later and ash is scattered across the floor. He gets into the room to see another vamp clawing around one of Zoe’s favorite hiding places.

He can hear her whimpering inside the vent.

Hannibal raises his weapon and pulls the trigger. It clicks empty and he tosses it aside. He backs up a step and, with a shiver of skin, his bones shift and move. Where once a man had stood is a two hundred pound jaguar crouched to pounce. And pounce he does. He crouches, shifts his weight and hurls himself into the air.

One leap and he’s on the vamp. Less than a second after that and his gigantic teeth are impacting the vamp’s skull with a sickening crack. A second after that, and a single twist of Hannibal’s head, and the vamp’s own head is separating from it’s body. Blood gushes from the vamp for few seconds, and then ash is floating to the floor.

The head rolls to a stop on the other side of the room just as it finishes dusting.

Hannibal sits there for a second, licking the blood off his muzzle before he crawls over to the vent and chuffs at Zoe. His bright eyes are reflecting the light, and he can see her huddled back by the bend, arms wrapped around her knees. He chuffs again and she looks up at him.

“Hannibal?” Zoe asks.

He chuffs an affirmative response and then backs up as she crawls out of the vent. When she gets out, he can only imagine what he looks like. There’s a gigantic pool of blood on the floor and ashes everywhere and sitting in the middle of it all is Hannibal. He’s gigantic, he knows that. Somehow he’s always seemed bigger in his jaguar form. Right now he’s covered in blood and he’s panting, which is showing off his teeth.

None of this stops Zoe from throwing her arms around his neck.

He lets her hug him for a moment, then pulls away. She looks at him, “Are we going to find Mommy now?”

He nods at her and leads her from the room. He’ll never tell her, but her hand in the fur at his neck is just as comforting to him as it is to her.

It’s easier to track Sommerfield’s scent in jaguar form. He takes a direct route through the compound. When they reach the sounds of fighting Hannibal stops. Zoe looks at the door in front of them with frightened eyes and trembling hands. He nudges her over to the nearest vent and she understands because she climbs inside and helps him get the grate mostly back into place.

Then he stalks off into the shadows.

*

Anna Sommerfield may be blind, but she is anything but helpless. She’s overwhelmed though. She’s covered in blood, she’s hurting and she’s only managed to kill one of her attackers. Up until this moment she’s managed to hold them off, but she’s tiring.

It comes out of nowhere. She can’t see it, but whatever it is it’s big and it just flew through the air and took down one of the vamps, and the other two are scrambling to fight against it. She huddles against the wall and listens as the screaming starts. Can hear growling and yowling, like there’s a big cat in the room. Seconds after it starts, it’s over.

Anna feels fur brush against her hand. Whiskers tickle her fingers until a nose nudges up under her hand. Her hands are shaking as she shifts to feel the creature sitting in front of her. A deep rumbling purr erupts from the creature as her hand feels out nose and face and ears. When her hand trails down a sturdy neck the air seems to shift and suddenly there is skin beneath her hand.

“Hey, hey, I got you.”

It’s Hannibal’s voice. She doesn’t know what he is, but he just saved her, and she lets go of her cane to reach for him with a whimper. He pulls her into his arms and lets her shiver for a minute. She can tell by the way his jaw is pressed to her head that’s he’s smiling. It’s a lot quieter in this form, but she can hear him purring deep in his chest too.

“Zoe!” she gasps when she gets herself under control.

“She’s fine,” Hannibal says. He helps her to her feet, takes her hand and leads her from the room.

“Hey, Zo?” Hannibal calls, “It’s safe to come out now.”

There’s a clang and a rattle and suddenly Anna’s arms are full of her daughter and they’re both crying again. Anna reaches out with one arm, seeking Hannibal. Seeking the boy that she knows looks to her like a mother. He takes her hand and she pulls him into the tangle of limbs they’ve become.

Eventually Zoe giggles, “Mommy, Hannibal’s naked.”

Anna can’t help it, she laughs too.

*

After that he tells the Sommerfields what he is. What exactly was taken away from him when Danica turned him. Nothing really changes except that when he can’t sleep at night he’ll join Anna in the lab and curl up on her feet in jaguar form. When Zoe has a nightmare he’ll curl up in bed with her, a giant, furry sentinel guarding her from the evils of the world.

Then everything changes again when they move into the Honeycomb Hideout.

*

Dracula. When Hedges explains what he’s managed to weed out of all the crap that has become Dracula lore, Hannibal feels like his brain is going to implode. Anna actually elbows him for being too mean to Hedges. He’ll apologize later by bringing back the good kind of coffee once he’s managed to wrap his head around all the crap now crowding the space.

He’s perched next to an extremely ugly gargoyle at the top of an old office building. He’s lying mostly in the shadows on the ledge in jaguar form watching the cars on the street below. It’s been raining. The drizzly kind that’s more like mist than rain. He flicks an ear around, listening to some pigeons coo in their nest one gargoyle over and wonders just how far down the crazy rabbit hole Danica has fallen to think that she has any chance of controlling something like this Drake dude.

He wouldn’t be surprised if she expected him to just fall at her feet like all her other minions do.

Hannibal chuffs to himself. It’s as close to a scoff as he can get in this form. He regards Danica with a certain level of scorn now. Now that he’s sober and himself again. Put him alone in a room with the vampire, and Hannibal will be the one walking away from that conversation. He supposes that he’ll deal with this the same way he’s been dealing with everything lately. If it tries to kill him or the Sommerfields he’ll kill it.

A few miles away an explosion rocks the warehouse district. A giant fireball with roiling black smoke lights up the sky and Hannibal sits up to look. He can dimly see the flashing lights of a hundred police cars through the gloom.

It looks like it’s starting.

*

Breaking Blade out of the FBI turns out to be a lot like going to out get donuts, being told they’re fresh, only when you get them home they’re hard as rocks. The only thing they’re good for is paperweights. That’s all that Hannibal feels like Blade is good for also. He’s acerbic, grumpy, and Hannibal knows the hybrid wants to shoot him.

It takes all he has not to growl at the dude and bare his teeth. He satisfies himself with putting himself between Blade and the woman he calls mother. He thinks that he could probably take Blade. He’d probably die doing it, but he could take him. Hannibal has bigger teeth and Blade has no strength advantage.

He keeps his opinions mostly to himself, and makes jokes about Care Bears and David Hasselhoff. His veneer of sarcasm and stupid jokes deflects any of them from looking too closely. Also it’s funny, so there’s that.

Blade thinks they’re a joke. Kids playing at Hunting. Doesn’t really believe them about Drake, but eventually they manage to convince him. Blade’s disbelief probably wasn’t helped with the fact that Hannibal had to play spokesman. Abby doesn’t like Blade. She knows they need him, but she’s resentful.

Also she likes to pretend she’s a badass.

So Hannibal takes Zoe and they paint a target on his new vest while they wait for the sun to come up. He wins at rock paper scissors and he gets to drive when they go out the next day.

*

Meeting Drake is like barreling headfirst into the Arctic. Hannibal is grabbed, clawed hand at his throat, the ultimate predator at his back. A scent like ozone and hot earth reaches his nose and his back bows back.

He can’t help the growl that rumbles in his chest. It isn’t loud enough for Blade and Abby to hear it, but Drake does. Drake goes still for a second, and then there’s a nose tucked under his ear as the first vampire inhales Hannibal’s scent.

Before he stabs Hannibal in the shoulder he smirks at Blade over his shoulder and says: “You don’t even know what you have, do you?”

Then there’s a screaming pain in Hannibal’s shoulder, and the only thing that matters is his family and getting them out because they’re going to lose so hard. Anna and Zoe can’t be collateral damage because of the humans stupidity. He tells Abby this when she injects his shiny new stab wound with the elastic polymer.

His shifter body does not like that. His accelerated healing keeps trying to close the wound and the polymer won’t let it. He bleeds way more than he would have otherwise, even with actively slowing the rate of healing. He ends up in their tiny infirmary woozy with blood loss and the knowledge that Drake probably knows what he is.

He wakes up to the sound of Dex’s loud music cutting off abruptly. Something’s wrong and he can’t tell what, but it’s enough to make him roll off the gurney, rip the bandage off and claw what’s left of the polymer out of his shoulder. A shake of his head and he’s using his night vision.

He finds Dex and Hedges dead, and there’s the faint scent of ozone around them and Hannibal knows.

“Zoe. Anna!”

He careens around corners and up the stairs. When he reaches Anna’s research area he stumbles to a halt because his mother is holding his sister, and Drake is standing over them, bones shifting under his skin.

Drake turns those shifting golden eyes on Hannibal and smiles, “The Shifter.”

“Please,” Hannibal says, reaching out with one hand.

“What will you do to save them, Shifter?” Drake demands, strolling around then casually. He reaches out and plays with a lock of Anna’s pretty blonde hair, and Hannibal swallows because they both already know the answer to that question.

“Anything,” Hannibal says. “I’ll do anything.”

And Drake knows he will. Is counting on it in fact.

*

Hannibal is chained to the floor in a cell in Talos Tower. Zoe and Anna are declared under Drake’s protection and he leads them away as Danica, Asher and Jarko enter the cell. Anna knows to be compliant, that Hannibal’s life probably depends on it.

“What will you do to him?” Anna asks when they’re alone. Zoe is sitting on the floor coloring, and she’s listening to Drake pace.

“”Tell me,” Drake begins finally. His voice is thoughtful. “Why does Danica hate your Hannibal so much?”

“He got away from her. She turned him and he hated her for it. When we found him he wanted us to kill him. We tested the cure on him instead.”

“I see.”

He does. Hannibal is a Shifter, rare and beautiful. To be cut off from that part of himself because of Danica must have been hell. Drake sits down next to Anna and takes her hand in his. He gazes into her unseeing eyes and asks: “Who is he to you?”

“He’s my son,” she tells him. “I may not have given birth to him, but he’s mine.”

“And would you swear your loyalty to me to save him?”

“I’ll do anything I have to to protect my children.”

“Good,” Drake leans back. “That’s good.”

Anna listens to Zoe color, thinks of the man being tortured just a few stories below, and says what’s on her mind. “You’re not going to save them, are you?”

Drake chuckles, “They do not deserve saving. They are not what vampires are meant to be.”

*

Hannibal yelps when he comes to. There’s a fluffy pomeranian licking his face and it’s got vampire face. “What the actual fuck!?”

Jarko is laughing and Asher is smirking. He misses some of the conversation, his responses coming out automatically. Then Danica threatens to turn him and Drake is leading Zoe into the cell and Hannibal is just so done. He’s done hiding and he’s done being hit. He meets Drake’s eyes and the vampire king nods at him.

It’s all he needs.

He stands up with a bone chilling roar, yanking his chains out of their fastenings. When Jarko charges he backhands him across the room and bares his teeth. He removes the cuffs and the chains clatter to the floor. Danica is yelling but he can’t hear anything except a vague screeching over the rush of blood in his ears.

“What the hell is he?!” Danica is screaming.

“Your death,” Drake tells her. “Which you have brought upon yourself.”

Hannibal takes that as his cue. He’s flying across the room and in seconds Danica is on the floor and his jaws are around her head, teeth sinking in with a sickening crunch. He yanks with all his not inconsiderable might and her head disconnects from her shoulders, his paws touch the bare floor through the ash.

Hannibal turns to face Jarko, ears flat to his skull as he roars. Pacman, the little vampire Pomeranian is cowering under Danica’s chair in a puddle of pee at the sight of the jaguar. Jarko moves a shuffling step sideways and Hannibal’s hackles go up and he crouches, growling.

“Isn’t he beautiful?” Drake asks Asher calmly. His voice is starkly admiring. “I remember when his kind walked the earth. Shifters of every kind. They were the best kind of guards one could ask for.”

“How the hell?” Asher gasps.

“Turning him suppressed his jaguar nature,” Drake tells him. “Why do you think he hates you so much?”

One. Two bounding steps and Hannibal is on Jarko, teeth digging into the arm the big vampire flung up at the last second. Jarko screams in pain as Hannibal’s jaws lock around the arm, severing tendons and piercing bone.

“Hannibal,” Drake says.

Hannibal turns, growling around his mouthful. Zoe is hugging Drake’s side, hiding her face. Drake has an arm around Zoe’s shoulders. Hannibal drops Jarko. He licks the blood off of his face and pads over to the vampire king and the little girl. Asher flinches away and Hannibal chuffs in amusement.

Zoe sinks to her knees and wraps her arms around Hannibal’s neck. He allows it because as far as he’s concerned whatever Zoe wants, she gets. Drake’s own hand sinks into the fur at his neck and scratches. He rumbles a purr and looks up at him.

Drake is smiling, “You are beautiful.”

Hannibal huffs and lets himself take in Drake’s scent fully. His mouth opening a little in that way of all cats as he commits it to memory. There’s ozone and hot earth and blood, but underneath all that is a scent he never thought he’d smell. That vague scent his mother had once told him about in hushed whispers when he and his brother were cubs.

Mate.

Drake is crouched next to him and Zoe, so it’s easy to take a step forward and bump his head into Drake’s chin. Drake laughs and lets Hannibal nudge him over onto his ass. Lets Hannibal thoroughly scent mark him.

“Asher,” Drake says conversationally as he pets the jaguar now scent marking Zoe. Asher freezes from where he’s trying to sneak from the room, Pacman in his arms. “Call a council, things are going to change.”

“Yes, my Lord,” Asher manages after swallowing heavily.

“And Asher?”

“Yes, my Lord?”

“Destroy that abomination, and any others you may have created.”

“Yes, my Lord.”

*

The sun is rising, and Drake’s room has a fantastic view of it painting the city gold. Anna and Zoe are in the next room, asleep and probably the safest two people in the world right now. Drake knows what they mean to Hannibal. They are now family to him as well.

He strides across the room from the door, shedding his shirt and pants as he goes. It had taken hours to get things started to prepare for Blade’s arrival. He’d killed over a dozen vampires and that was just the beginning. He was tired.

And he had a mate sleeping in his bed.

After all these long years. Hundreds of lifetimes spent looking and now here he was. Hannibal King, Jaguar Shifter, lying naked in his bed. Golden and sun warmed and _his_. As he crawls into the bed to wrap himself around Hannibal he decides that the waiting was worth it. The joy singing in his veins tells him that.

“Mmmmphf,” Hannibal grunts when Drake pulls him into his body. He rolls a little, turning onto his back and looking at the vampire king with half-lidded eyes. “Hey.”

Drake caresses his face with one hand, wonder on his face, “I have looked for you for so long.”

Hannibal smirks, “And here I am. Whatcha gonna do with me?”

Drake knows Hannibal means it lecherously, but Drake takes the question seriously; “Love you. I am going to love you.”

Hannibal smiles faintly, “Sounds good to me. I’ve waited for you too, you know.”

Drake leans down to breathe in Hannibal’s scent, “I will deal with the mess my children have created and then I will show you the world.”

“The whole world?”

“Where do you wish to go?”

Hannibal grins, “Let’s take Zoe to Disney World.”

“I do not know what that is, but it will be our first stop.”

He doesn’t know why, but the statement makes Hannibal start laughing uproariously. He decides he likes the sound and will endeavor to make it happen as often as he can.

*

Hannibal is amused by all the cowering going on. The Talos clan has obviously taken Drake’s cleaning house seriously and are doing everything they can to not be drained and killed by him. None of them will meet Hannibal’s eyes. Obviously there’s some rumors going around about what he is.

He likes it.

The conference room has been cleared out. There is a low table and some cushy chairs by the windows and one large chair (read: throne) at the end. Hannibal leads Anna and Zoe over to the chairs and helps set Zoe up with coloring. Zoe climbs into Anna’s lap though and demands to know what happens next as she hands her mother a book.

Hannibal doesn’t know where the braille copy of the Emerald City of Oz came from, and he doesn’t really care. It’s just cool that they have it.

He prowls around the edge of the room, let’s how not human he is show. He’s wearing a very nice pair of brown leather pants and one of Drake’s shirts and he’s barefoot because he knows he’s going to be ruining these clothes. He plans to bite Jarko’s head off.

“We are expecting guests. When they arrive they will be brought here, understood?” Drake demands into the silence.

Several voices stutter out yeses and there are several nods. They’ll just stay out of Blade’s way. The goal of most of the vampires in the building is just to survive the night.

“Asher?”

Asher steps forward. He’s in a clean, blue suit and he looks less pinched around the eyes than usual. Hannibal wonders if Danica’s death will actually be good for Asher. He doesn’t hate Asher as much as his sister. Danica had done all the damage, Asher had just tried to pick up the pieces where he could.

Hannibal owes his survival through those years as Danica’s vampire cabana boy to Asher, and he no longer resents that fact. Nowadays he’s actually grateful. Without Asher taking care of him, feeding him and seeing to his wounds, Hannibal wouldn’t have found the Sommerfields.

“The dogs?” Drake asks.

“Dealt with,” Asher replies promptly. “Though Jarko will protest.”

“Yes, well…” Drake trails off as his eyes meet Hannibal’s.

“Jarko’s not long for this world, now is he, Asher?” Hannibal asks. He stalks across the room and flops into the chair that someone thoughtfully dragged over next to Drake’s throne. Hannibal grins at Asher with his teeth. Asher sighs.

“No, no he isn’t.”

A vampire slinks into the room and up to Drake, leaning over and whispering to him softly. If Hannibal wasn’t so close he wouldn’t have heard it, as it is he’s got better hearing than a vampire anyway. “Blade is here.”

When Abby and Blade enter the room, Blade is stone faced but Abby is visibly confused. Her eyes go from Hannibal sitting in a chair next to Drake to Anna and Zoe reading in an armchair by the window. They’d obviously been expecting resistance. Abby had probably been expecting to find Hannibal chained up somewhere getting the shit beaten out of him.

“Abby!” Zoe calls, excited. She darts across the room to throw her arms around Abby’s middle. Abby staggers in shock, but hugs back.

“Welcome, Daywalker,” Drake says.

“Hey, doodlebug?” Hannibal says, rising. Zoe turns to him and he holds out a hand, “Why don’t you and Asher here take Mom upstairs? I think it’s time for dinner.”

Asher lets Anna take his arm as Zoe asks, “Are you and Drake coming too?”

“Not right now, kiddo. We need to talk to Abby and Blade about a few things.”

“Oh. Okay.” Zoe goes with her mother and Asher. “We’ll save you some dinner, okay?”

“Sounds great, doodlebug.”

Abby waits until they’re out of the room before she explodes, “What the hell is going on?!”

Blade is reaching for a weapon and Drake stands, “There will be no need for that, Blade.”

“Oh, and why is that?” Blade demands.

“You,” Drake points at one of the vampires lining the room. The man whimpers. “Explain to Blade what will be happening to the vampire nation.”

“We’re to stop feeding on innocents. Familiars only and no killing,” the vampire stutters out. “If we’re caught doing otherwise we die.”

“And we’re just supposed to believe the word of some blood sucker?” Blade wonders.

“If you hadn’t noticed,” Hannibal says conversationally, “they’re more scared of Drake than they are of you, Blade.”

“I’d rather have Blade kill me that the king,” someone at the back pipes up. “At least then it would be quick.”

The statement actually startles a laugh out of Blade. A look around the room doesn’t reveal the vamp with the guts to say that out loud, but it’s obvious that several of the others agree with the statement.

“And what about us?” Abby asks.

“A truce,” Drake says. “The Hunters may kill any vampire they wish so long as that vampire was actively breaking the edicts of this court. If they are killing humans, you may kill them. However, if they are living peaceably and your Hunters kill them, that hunter is forfeit to my own hunters.”

Blade growls, but Abby looks thoughtful. “So basically you want us to keep doing what we do while you clean house?”

“Essentially, yes.”

Hannibal is surprised at how well the talk goes after that. Drake and Abby pound out a few more details with Blade growling threats in the background, but in the end the Hunters and the Vampires have a tentative truce. It’s fragile and it’s going to take a hell of a lot of work to keep in place, but it’s something.

“Are you coming, Hannibal?” Abby asks him when they’ve separated and closed the talks.

Hannibal shakes his head, “Not this time Abs.”

“What about Zoe and Sommerfield?”

“They’re safe as houses right here.”

Abby looks doubtful and confused, but before she can reply Jarko comes roaring into the room. He’s yelling bloody murder about how he’s going to tear Hannibal into little pieces and feed them to his dogs. Jarko apparently doesn’t know that Asher got rid of the dogs.

Hannibal was right, he destroys the clothes.

Jarko’s momentum gives him a slight advantage and he manages to deflect the jaguar and his teeth into the wall. Abby is cursing impressively and Drake is standing, watching avidly. Hannibal kicks out with a leg to push away from the wall and then gathers himself, growling.

“I’m going to kill you, kitty,” Jarko says.

Hannibal chuffs in amusement and launches himself at Jarko. One. Two leaps and he’s on him. Jarko makes the same mistake he did before and Hannibal gets his teeth into his recently healed arm. He screams and curses and punches at Hannibal. Hannibal’s response is to dig his claws into the meat of Jarko’s torso and legs, readjust his grip with his teeth and yanks the arm out of its socket.

Jarko howls and bucks, dislodging Hannibal as the arm turns to ash in his mouth. Hannibal prowls around the writhing vampire and strikes. There’s a sickening crunch as Hannibal’s teeth crush Jarko’s skull, and then it’s separating from his neck and rolling across the room as both it and the rest of Jarko turn to ash. Hannibal licks at the blood on his face and turns to face Abby and Blade.

“H-Hannibal?” Abby asks softly.

Hannibal inclines his head in a nod of acknowledgement before he turns and trots over to Drake. Drake sits down in his throne and Hannibal sits at his side and then flops over onto his feet. Drake chuckles at this.

“Hannibal is fine where he is, Miss Whistler,” Drake tells the room at large.

Abby swallows hard and lets Blade tow her out of the room. By the time they reach the street she will have come to terms with the fact that Hannibal had apparently never trusted her enough to tell her his secret.

It makes her feel horrible.

*

“I hate this tower,” Hannibal says, climbing into bed and letting Drake draw him into his arms. His hair is still damp from his shower and he snuffles into the crevice between Drake and the mattress. They’re the same height, but Drake is stockier and has more mass.

“Then we shall leave it,” Drake replies. “I have to visit the other vampire families anyway. That is likely to take some time.”

“Mmm,” Hannibal hums at him. He cracks his eyes open to peer up at Drake. “Talk about work later, sex me up now.”

Drake chuckles, “Demanding.”

“You love it,” Hannibal retorts, pulling the vampire king down into a filthy kiss.

*

“Hannibal?”

“Yeah doodlebug?”

“Where are we going?”

“Well, Drake said he wanted to show us the world… So we’re starting in Florida.”

“What’s in Florida?”

“Disney World.”


End file.
